Automatically shiftable vehicle transmissions in planetary design have been described many times in the prior art and are subject to continual development and improvement. These transmissions are to have a sufficient number of gears and a ratio well-suited for motor vehicles having a wide overall difference between gear ratios, favorable increment spacings and a driveaway ratio sufficiently large for the application. On the other hand, these transmissions are to require the lowest possible construction costs, in particular a small number of shift elements. Usually in sequential shift mode, so-called group shifting is also to be avoided, that is, when achieving the next higher or next lower gear, only one previously closed shift element is opened and one previously opened shift element is closed.
From U.S. Pat. No. 9,175,748 B2, for example, an automatic transmission having a drive shaft, an output shaft, four individual simple planetary gearsets and seven shift elements is known, in which a total of eleven forward gears can be achieved without group-shifting by selectively closing three of these seven shift elements and a reverse gear can also be achieved. Viewed in axial direction, the four planetary gearsets are arranged in series in a housing of the automatic transmission. Each of these four planetary gearsets includes a sun gear, a ring gear and a planetary carrier having planetary gears rotatably mounted on this planetary carrier, which mesh with the sun gear and the ring gear. The first and second planetary gearset form a front-mounted gearset as a so-called 2-carrier 4-shaft transmission, which can be connected to the drive shaft, whereas the third and fourth planetary gearset form the main gearset as a so-called 2-carrier 5-shaft transmission, which is permanently connected to the output shaft. In this case, the front-mounted gearset is permanently connected to the main gearset via exactly one connection path, which in turn is not directly connected to any of the seven shift elements. The front-mounted gearset is permanently directly connected to the first, second, third, fourth and fifth shift elements, whereas the main gearset is permanently directly connected to the sixth and seventh shift elements. It is essential that the sixth shift element is arranged in the flow of power between the ring gear of the third planetary gearset and the transmission housing, wherein the ring gear of the third planetary gearset itself is not formed as a coupling shaft between the third and fourth planetary gearsets, and that the seventh shift element is arranged in the flow of power between the ring gear of the fourth planetary gearset and the planetary carrier of the third planetary gearset, wherein the ring gear of the fourth planetary gearset in turn is also not formed as a coupling shaft between the third and fourth planetary gearsets. Thus, the sixth shift element is permanently directly connected to the third planetary gearset without being directly connected to the fourth planetary gearset, whereas the seventh shift element is permanently directly connected to both the third and the fourth planetary gearsets, such that both planetary gearsets of the main gearset transfer torque in only one of the forward gears, whereas in all other forward gears and in reverse gear only one of the two planetary gearsets of the main gearset transfers torque and the other of the two planetary gearsets of the main gearset bears no load.